Trickle Prattle: 08/01/2011

Shasha

India just celebrated its 64th year year of independence. But are we really independent? Is our country as democratic as it claims to be? Where people like Anna Hazare are locked up in jails only cause he raised his voice to protest against corruption. Where rape, murder, theft, corruption is on the rise.Where society is a major threat to your freedom of expression, where people murder couples in the name of "honour killing" and the government looks on.

Delhi held the "slut walk" for the first time in India and yes, I feel it was necessary. Why blame women all the time? Why categorize them as "sluts" for the clothes they wear? Is it reason enough to rape a woman just because she was candidly dressed? Or is it even justified to touch her inappropriately just because some man finds her seductive? Is it the fault of a woman to look good, to dress well, or dress seductively when the situation demands so? Blame it on those men too, who have no control over their sexual desires, who treat women as objects of lust, who marry only to mask their true nature. Our society is so male dominated that the act of a man standing and peeing by the side of the road is considered "utterly normal" whereas, people frown at a woman who has to breastfeed a hungry baby.

Could you define independence for me? I guess it would mean something different for every person. For me, freedom is the liberation of women. The day when we wont be looked down upon, the day when I can travel in a public bus without being groped for or stared at. The day when if I raise my voice to protest, people won't frown on me and doubt my voice.

For me, freedom also means the freedom to express love. Look at the couple walking down the road hand in hand, look there, he's put his arm around her waist, look there, he just stole a kiss, look she's sitting with her head resting on his shoulders. Now, look around those couples and count. Count the number of people frowning, count the people taunting, count the number of people ogling, count the people ready to protest against such "inappropriate behaviour". Why? Is love a crime? Ironically we're born in the land of Kamasutra, a land which extensively boasts of love in its purest form even in the Vedas.

This is what freedom means to me. What are your views?

Labels: Blabber-on :-P, emotions, expressions, freedom, independence, liberation, love, women 6 comments |

Connecting People

Ashu

We are connected. Today as you read this post, you are nothing but connected to my thoughts, my ideas, my writing. All because maybe you like to read and so you connect your world with various authors, bloggers, writers and find solace in their writings. Everyone in this world is trying to find the best ways to stay connected, be it phones, televisions, social networking, emailing, we are all reaching forward to grab at the most alluring technologies of interaction. We have come a long way from being cave-men-utilising-smoke-signals to wirelessly-connected-city-dwellers. It’s “the flintstones” turning into “the jetsons”.

Humans are “social” animals. There was a time when connecting was too literal in its meaning. With every single gadget we bought those days, a whole bunch of cables were dumped on our laps. So it was usually 3-4 cables per gadget or even more. Imagine a house of four, phones, iPods, endless cables of computer, laptop and zillion other peripherals, a few more for the television and home theatre. It’s a sea of cables guys! It’s a wonder none fell down on a day-to-day basis. It was jittery feeling :D, hundreds and hundreds of cables waiting to trap us and trip us. Cables, cables everywhere. Not a step was safe :D.

Today we’ve come a long way. Everything’s going wireless, starting with phones, to televisions, to laptops, computers, internet. And everyone seems to have entered into the rat race to be “social-at-its-extreme”.Every other person now owns a cell phone, LCD, iPad, iPhone. Everyone is into social networking, emailing, chatting, thousands of sites today cater to our specific needs of interaction. Not just internet circles, there are virtual worlds for all your other-worldly desires and styles of living.

Connecting with people is not just a human need, it's a business, it's a skill, it's an addition to your extravagant portfolio, it's a race. it's like a badge on your chest shouting how super-humanly omnipresent you could be in every corner of the earth.

Labels: Blabber-on :-P, changes in technology, connecting, media, social-networking, technology 6 comments |

Why I Categorize My Mom As “Dashabhuja"

Shasha

For people who are not quite familiar with the "Dashabhuja", she is our very own Hindu deity, Goddess Durga, armed with ten weapons in her ten hands and a third eye on her forehead, she's the one who rid the heavens of the rakshasas or the demons and restored peace. The supreme mother according to Hindu Mythology, she is considered to be the most powerful for she had been born when all the Gods and Goddesses put together their powers to rid the heavens of the Asuras.

And so is my mom, well, she certainly didn't have such an extraordinary birth but with her extreme abilities to multitask and do the household chores, I certainly imagine her with ten hands and flaming eyes, scanning her territory for unwanted intruders and unwanted germs and dirt, which render her home to something slightly less than spanking clean. Her ability to wake up at five in the morning and begin with her everyday chores, I feel is an incredible feat. I have never managed to wake up a single morning to the sound of the alarm, but her one roar of "wake up!!" is enough to strike all the chords in my body and put me in super alert mode.

I get to see my mom in super ninja mode from 8 to 10 in the morning every day. Just before she's rushing to office, she is heavily armed to fight all evilS of germs, dust and garbage and make her home clean.
[Caution: Even humans are not spared during this time.
Safety Measures: Please remain stationary at one point for the above mentioned two hours.]

You see like the Goddess Durga, my mom possesses a third eye as well. It is a very difficult feat to get past her “lie-detector” (don’t even try it, you will land up lying even more). Her third eye also detects the minutest of changes to her nest, she may just return from work and ask, “Why had you pulled the curtains?”. (:-O)

But all the ten weapons and third eye come very much in handy when it comes to warding off evil spirits- aka Roadside-Romeos- aka unwanted boys from her daughter. For example, a week back, a Roadside-Romeo (an old irritating classmate) started disturbing again, to which I resorted to my last and final weapon of defense, my mom, she just had to attend to his call once and whoosh! He vanished. J

So you see my mom is a woman of power, including her temper which often cracks down on me like a thunderbolt, she is a lady with ten hands, a third eye and an “unexposed, hidden” soft core, and I love her.